


im a goner (somebody catch my breath)

by confinesofpersonalknowledge, FebruaryFun



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Amnesia, DONT FINISH THESE TAGS, Fake Character Death, M/M, but i dont want to give spoilers, if you want to avoid spoilers for the next few chapters, lol, okay listen the main tag is kinda misleading
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-06
Updated: 2019-03-06
Packaged: 2019-11-12 18:23:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18016019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/confinesofpersonalknowledge/pseuds/confinesofpersonalknowledge, https://archiveofourown.org/users/FebruaryFun/pseuds/FebruaryFun
Summary: Patton Miles is a war veteran, re-called back to the line of duty. Logan is his fiance, who soon becomes his widower (though does it count if they never married?). Life moves on. Until Logan walks into a flower shop and sees a familiar face staring back at him.





	im a goner (somebody catch my breath)

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn't have done with without Em's (FebruaryFun) help! A serious blessing, a great friend. Check out her stuff!!

Logan doesn’t quite remember where it starts, or when. Maybe it starts with the letter that comes in their mail, a small letter that makes Patton’s cheerful face shutter closed, disappearing somewhere Logan can no longer reach. But it starts before that, if Logan truly thinks about it. It starts long before Logan ever met Patton, before the two of them got to know each other, and slowly fell in love.

Patton Miles went to war for six years. He came out of it a changed man, though he takes care that no one around him sees that change. If you knew him, then you’d know he’d changed.

Which is why he was drawn to Logan in the first place. Logan, a new grad student at the college, nervous and struggling to come to terms with his new diagnosis of OCD, very obviously does not know Patton. He doesn’t know the way darkness weighs under Patton’s eyes in a way that hadn’t before, doesn’t know the weight of the nightmares on Patton’s shoulder is one unfamiliar.

All he knows is that his favorite number is six, Patton served for six years, and that - amazingly - Patton wants to be his friend.

Somewhere in the middle of all of that, the two of them fall in love.

\---

The letter was short and to the point but Logan can’t forget the way horror dawned in his chest, rising to his throat and digging in its claws. He reads the letter over and over, looking for some sign of a joke, a prank.

Patton had almost shot him last night, forgetting that he was home and safe in the midst of a nightmare, of a flashback. Logan had spent the night shaking and holding onto a pack of ammo, watching the scared form of his boyfriend tremble. He’d watched Patton look him in the eyes and seen the lack of recognition in there.

He can’t let Patton go back to something like that. He can’t Patton return to a world that would gladly see him dead if it meant that some people on the other end of Patton’s gun died too.

He doesn’t have a choice.

His shaking panic wakes up his boyfriend, and Patton takes the letter gently from where it was clenched in his fingers.

Patton reads it, and then says words that damn them, fingers gently tapping out the same sweet pattern of six-six-six on Logan’s biceps. “I’ve been called back. I deploy in a month.” 

\---

Logan begged and pleaded with him, spent nights wrapped up in blankets under the skies holding onto Patton with the ever present fear of never having a chance to do so again.

Their feet tangled under the blanket and the stars seemed to frown down at their misfortune as Patton ran his hand through Logan’s hair. (Six, always six, everytime _six_ ). “Marry me,” he whispered into Logan’s hair.

Logan looked up at him with tears swimming in his eyes. A hand came up to cup Patton’s cheek, a soft, sad smile on his face. “Come back to me, and I will,” he replied softly.

It’s like Logan’s heart is shattering, being torn apart and pulled in so many different directions that he doesn’t know which one to follow. He doesn’t want to lose Patton - it’s a thought that keeps him up in the middle of the night, watching the rise and fall of his boyfriend’s chest and mapping out his breathing. He doesn’t want to be left alone - that thought is almost as terrifying, to be alone in this world without the one man who has understand Logan, seen him and accepted him without question. He wants to go with Patton, stand and fight by his side, though Patton doesn’t let him.

It hurts. 

\---

The day came and it felt like someone took a hammer to Logan’s heart and smashed it into a million pieces.

Patton looked different, in his uniform. He looks like a man who has killed, and a man who will kill, once again, to protect the country he loves. It makes Logan’s heart swell with pride. It makes Logan’s heart ache with unimaginable fear.

Patton swept Logan into his arms, held him there as he presses six gentle kisses to Logan’s face. Hugged him six times. Whispered a promise of love six times.

Lets a tear slip down his cheek one time.

Patton promised to come back to Logan, and did not say goodbye. _This isn’t goodbye, so I won’t say it._

Logan didn’t think that those would be the last words he would hear Patton say. 

\---

_Patton doesn’t know much these days beyond pain. He wakes up to pain, lives his day with pain. He trains through the pain, and goes to sleep with the pain._

_He forgets his old life, piece by piece, taken from his hands slowly and without regret or remorse._

_All he’s left with is a small ring on a necklace and the number six._

\---

They drive by the veterans’ cemetery when the asset is sent to his primary location. Six cars backfire six times in a row on their way and Payton doesn’t much attention to it beyond noting the number (six, the most important number to him, even if the asset does not understand why). It has no use for such frivolous matters.

The implant in his eye whirls and clicks five times, and the asset finds himself waiting for a sixth that does not come. He sighs softly in irritation, glancing at the flower shop he is meant to maintain.

The implant in his ear clicks, the one in his eye whirls, and the asset relaxes as he steps into it. _Blossoms and Blooms._ The asset feels a small smile cross his face. _Try saying that ten times._

The routine settles quickly. A customer enters. The asset checks whether they are important (they never are). The asset gets them their flowers (bouquets are made in multiples of six, pots priced at $6.66 a piece, cards can be added for an extra six cents). The customer pays. The asset waits.

Repeat.

Input is taken in within moments, the whirring and clicking of the asset’s implants a comforting noise amongst the silence of the flowers. 

Repeat.

The hours would blend in together if the asset had a concept of time. 

Repeat.

The eye implant always clicks five times. It… annoys the asset.

Repeat.

Repeat. 

Repeat.

Until _he_ enters, and proceeds to fall into a dead faint.


End file.
